Dr Lappin has been invited to speak about the work of RTC to master's of architecture students at Strathclyde University on 22 February, 2018. Her talk is part of a multi-year series devised by Dr Jonathan Charley, Director of Cultural Studies in the Department of Architecture which has included presentations by experts in film, literature and politics.

Gascia Ouzounian will give a talk as part of the City Sonic Places event at the London College of Communication on 2 February from 2-7 PM. Ouzounian's talk, 'Acoustic Ordnance or Acoustic Surveillance? Mapping Sound and Noise', will investigate the politics of sound mapping and noise mapping in urban contexts. Sarah Lappin will also attend the event to present our new publication The Sound-Considered City.

On 28 February 2018, Dr Lappin and Dr Ouzounian will present the findings of RTC to date at the Northern Ireland Assembly's Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS). The event, which occurs throughout the year, allows academics and researchers to present their work to elected officials, policy makers and civil servants. The session on 28 Feburary will feature work of scholars on the topics of "People and surroundings -- impacts of sound."

Please join us from 3-4 PM on Thursday 1 March 2018 in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford for a talk by sound artist and composer Keith Obadike.

In this talk Keith Obadike will present recent artworks done with his partner Mendi Obadike. Over the last twenty years the Obadikes have created work for museums, galleries and public spaces. These projects range from site specific sound installations and a recent soundwalk app to data sonification works.

Keith Obadike is an American artist and composer who works with collaboratively with writer Mendi Obadike. Together Mendi + Keith Obadike make art, music, and literature. They have exhibited and performed at The New Museum in New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art , and The Museum of Modern Art. Their projects include a series of large-scale public sound art works: Blues Speaker (for James Baldwin) at The New School (commissioned by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics with Harlem Stage), Free/Phase at the Chicago Cultural Center and Rebuild Foundation, and Compass Song (commissioned by Times Square Arts). Their recent gallery exhibitions include Numbers Station [Furtive Movements] at RYAN LEE Gallery, NYC and the group show Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) at The Whitechapel Gallery, London. Their honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, Pick Laudati Award for Digital Art, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award Biennial Award.

Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. He is an associate professor in the Communication Department at William Paterson University and a digital media editor at the journal Obsidian. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University. She is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute and a poetry editor at Fence Magazine. They both serve as art advisors to the Times Square Alliance and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Recomposing the City, Urban Rhythms and Theatrum Mundi will co-host a Study Day on 'Acoustic Cities' at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, from 10 AM - 5.30 PM on 2 March 2018. The day will feature workshops, seminars and presentations by practitioners and who work across sound and urban research.

Gascia Ouzounian will give a guest lecture hosted by the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. The talk is titled "Powers of Hearing: Acoustic Defense and Technologies of Listening during the First World War."

RTC PhD students Conor McCafferty and Elen Flugge are presenting work at the Invisible Places Conference University of the Açores in Ponta Delgada.

Elen's paper Soundly Planning: practically listening to (Belfast) sound places explores how applied listening practices may help develop a critical ear for urban sites. Conor's paper Mapping, Scoring and Activating Urban Sonic Space: Ljud vid Nissan / Sound at Nissan explores how maps were used as an important interface for the analysis of public urban spaces, artistic development, public engagement and sonic activation in a sound art festival staged in Halmstad, Sweden, in September 2016.

Gascia Ouzounian will speak at the upcoming 'Sound | Making | Space' event hosted by the Royal Academy in association with the Bartlett School of Architecture. Other speakers include Mark Bain, Lee Berwick, and Kaffe Matthews.

RCT's PhD candidate Conor McCafferty will present a paper on sound mapping at the 10th Annual NECS conference. This large international conference draws together international researchers to discuss cinema, media studies and related fields to do with moving image and sound. Conor will be part of a panel on Friday 29 July exploring "Sound, Space and Time: Sonic Connectivities in Static and Moving Image Media". His paper will examine sound maps as collective digital witnessing of urban space. While at the conference, Conor will also chair a panel on "Connected Cities and Archives" on Saturday 30 July.

Recomposing the City and PLACE Architecture & Built Environment Centre will co-host a series of 3 workshops at The MAC Belfast in September on the topic of urban sound design. The workshops, which are generously supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, will bring together urban planners, architects and sound artists in discussing the role of sound in the design and planning of urban environments. We look forward to welcoming workshop participants at The MAC in September.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian, co-director of Recomposing the City, will give a Keynote Lecture on 'Acoustic Urbanism: Critical Perspectives on Urban Sound' at the upcoming conference 'The Role and Position of Sounds and Sounding Arts in Public Urban Environments'. She will join other Keynote speakers Salomé Vogelin, Holger Schulze, and Jean-Paul Thibauld.

ABSTRACT. The practice is interested in sonic atmosphere, or the sound of a space, as a principal contributor to the character of interior spaces. We develop this in our architecture by considering internal acoustic environments as one of the primary constituents of architectural space making. We work in collaboration with musicians and composers to explore spatial and compositional potential in buildings, temporary installations and theoretical projects. This allows us to engage more fully with the metaphysics of interior space in our work.

BIOGRAPHY. Steve Larkin is a musician and architect. He studied architecture at University College Dublin and graduated in 2002. He established Steve Larkin Architects in 2007. Since then the practice has been the recipient of a number of national and international awards and commendations including RIAI Best Emerging Practice 2012. The practice was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2013. Steve has taught as a Senior Lecturer (Education) at Queens University Belfast and is a Studio Tutor at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is a guest critic in a number of universities in Ireland and the UK. He is currently a EU Marie Curie ITN ADAPTr Fellow in PhD postgraduate research at RMIT University Melbourne.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian and Dr Sarah Lappin will read from their recent article 'Soundspace: A Manifesto' as part of Bright Club Belfast, an event that features researchers and academics in short, 7-10 minute comedy sets based on their current research.

BIOGRAPHY. Rachel Ní Chuinn works fluidly between areas of performance, installation and composition. She uses radio, sound, text and electronics to explore ideas of touch and movement. Her recent feature documentary The Shape of Sounds to Come looks at the relationship between sound and space.

Sven Anderson is an artist working between Ireland and the US since 2001. Anderson's work explores the act of listening within diverse architectural, physical, social, and emotional contexts. His practice is a discursive platform that operates through artistic intervention, academic publication, participatory processes, and interactive design. He is currently working on a public art commission titled 'MAP: Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design', which won the European Soundscape Award in 2014. The project explores the field of urban acoustic planning through a sustained artist placement within Dublin City Council, working to produce public outputs in the form of permanent urban sound installations alongside an ongoing institutional intervention through which a more discursive framework might emerge.

Dr. Jacqueline Waldock is a sound artist and academic. She is currently Artist in Residence at Falling Horse in Manchester where she uses sound and mapping to explore Ancoats as it goes through a time of ‘regeneration’. Her research interests include: urban soundscapes, creative regeneration and the impact of change upon domestic and temporary domestic spaces.

Katherine Fennelly is a researcher and historical archaeologist, specialising in the historic built environment, and the development of dedicated institutions for public confinement in the nineteenth-century. She studied history and archaeology at University College Dublin, and gained her doctorate with the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester in 2013. Her research interests include material history, sensory studies, and concepts of space and place. In this seminar, Katherine Fennelly will present her work on the creation and study of a sensory environment in early-nineteenth century lunatic asylums.

The research group Recomposing the City will host a PGR symposium, Soundspace, on Monday, 18 May. This symposium emerges from our recent Soundspace seminar series, which has explored the topic of sound and space across multiple disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, planning, music and sonic arts.

ABSTRACT: Sound mapping practices and projects have proliferated around the world in recent years. They offer a critical alternative to the emphasis on noise and noise pollution in current policy, scholarship and practice. Their multivalent character suggests new insights across disciplines: the study of urban sound; practices of (collaborative) sound art; sound in architectural and urban design practice; urban pedagogy and urban data and policy work. This research has gathered an initial dataset of approximately 100 sound maps from around the world. This will lead, firstly, to a critical review of sound mapping practices to help to bring the field into dialogue with architecture and urban design discourse. This paper will chart a path through multiple creative, theoretical and technical fields to bring together disciplines of architecture, sonic arts and sound studies.

The paper outlines a proposed methodology of participatory engagement: firstly with built environment professionals, exploring urban sound mapping in urban analytical terms; and secondly with young people, as a means of experiential learning "of the city" through the urban sound environment. These different case study subject groups are chosen to investigate potential applications of participatory sound mapping practices in both the professional context (for those working in design practice or policy environments) and the educational context (for young urban dwellers with no experience of design practice).

Sarah Lappin has been invited by artist Abigale Neate Wilson to participate in a roundtable discussion titled "This is Not a City" as part of the Edinburgh Arts Festival on Thursday 27 August 2015. The event will reflect on how the urban environment is mapped through language and how this language is mutating as a result of contemporary techno-culture.

The panel will also feature Neate Wilson, Ken MacLeod, leading Scottish science fiction writer and Johnny Rodger, writer and Professor of Urban Literature at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.

The event is supported by The Telfer Gallery and Scottish Book Trust. For tickets please visit EventBrite.

All are warmly invited to a presentation and reception with architect Sarah Lappin and musicologist/sound artist Gascia Ouzounian at Errant Bodies project space in Berlin. Sarah and Gascia are co-directors of the research group Recomposing the City: Sound Art and Urban Architectures at Queen's University Belfast. This group brings together sound artists, architects and planners in collaborative projects around the topic of sound and the built environment.

From September through November 2015, Gascia and Sarah will be based in Berlin to conduct research for their project Hearing Trouble. For this project, they are keen to interview sound artists, architects, planners, curators and community activists who have been involved with sound art, soundscape and sound studies communities in Berlin. The event will be an informal opportunity to meet Gascia and Sarah, who will give a short presentation on their project followed by a reception.

We are thrilled to host Carsten Stabenow, Artistic Director of Tuned City, who will give a seminar on this urban sound art festival, which has been presented in Berlin (2008), Nürnberg (2011), Tallinn (2010-11) and Brussels (2013). Tuned City draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within the architecture and urban planning discourse–as well as its strategies and working methods–into the context of sound and listening. This expanded discussion reenforces the potential of the spatial and communicative properties of sound as a tool and means of urban practice.

Carsten Stabenow (1972) works as free curator, producer, communication designer and artist on the intersection of artistic production and mediation. He studied communications and postgraduate interdisciplinary studies in berlin and is initiator of diverse festivals, formats and initiatives within the context of new media, art + science and sound art. Carsten Stabenow is the founder of the german media art festival garage, initiator and artistic director of tuned city and co-founder of the Berlin art and media production platform DOCK. As a member of the staalplaat soundsystem and solo he has realised several installations and performed worldwide.

Recomposing the City is very pleased to welcome Carsten Seiffarth, a musicologist and leading sound art curator. Seiffarth is founder and artistic director of singuhr-hoergalerie, the premiere exhibition venue for sound art in Berlin, and one of the artistic directors of the media art laboratory TESLA Berlin. As an independent curator and producer he internationally initiates and produces exhibitions and projects within the context of sound art. Since 2010 Seiffarth has been Curator of Bonn Hoeren, a unique project in which the City of Bonn appoints an annual City Sound Artist. Artists featured in this role so far include Sam Auinger, Erwin Stache, Andreas Oldörp, and Christina Kubisch.

Recomposing the City is looking forward to participating in the symposium 'Beyond Noise and Silence: Listening for the City', 2-5 pm, 8 May at the Dublin Civic Offices, Dublin 2. This event is focused on 'Environment: From Sound Art to Urban Sound Design and Acoustic Planning'. It is organised by artist Sven Anderson, who leads the Minor Architecture project at Dublin City Council. Please find more information on the event here.

Recomposing the City is proud to co-present the exhibition '48Hz' by Miguel Negrao. 48 Hz is a sound installation that Negrao created in response to Matilde Meireles' project X Marks the Spot, whose 'off-site' elements are documented here. Please note that the opening will be 5.30 pm at Platform Arts on Friday 28 March and the exhibition will run on 28-30 March at Platform Arts, 1 Queen Street. The event is co-presented by PLACE, Platform Arts, Sonic Arts Research Centre, and Recomposing the City.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist. His artistic work explores questions of social life and cultural narratives, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. This results in situational and contextual projects that create forms of intervention in public spaces, acts of translation and archiving, as well as micro-actions aimed at the sphere of the (un)common. He is also an active lecturer working with institutions around the world addressing questions of auditory culture, sonic and spatial arts, experimental media practices and the voice. Current research projects focus on "voicing and the choreography of the mouth", "sonic materiality and auditory knowledge", and "the aesthetics and politics of invisibility" (Via BrandonLabelle.net)

The trembling voice, the determined gaze, the soft touch, the pouting lip, the pain of freedom, the frog in the throat, the distant horizon, the sudden burst, the gathering crowd, the forgotten words, the unknown outcome, the social energy, the lonely thought, the dispossessed, the longing and the nation, the disciplinary grip, the body on the run, the lost tribe, the flickering light, the moon overhead, the remembrance of things, the quiet hour, the unforgettable sound, the afternoon that drifts, the road to nowhere, and the sign up ahead, the song that made me stop, the whisper, the encounter, the writing on the wall.

Brandon LaBelleis an artist, writer and theorist. His works explore questions of social life, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. He is the author of Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (Errant Bodies, 2012) Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (Continuum, 2010) and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum, 2006). He is professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

Recomposing the City is delighted to host a symposium on the research group's central question: how can connections between sonic arts and architecture generate new ways of understanding, analysing and transforming urban environments? The symposium will bring together leading and emerging voices in architecture, city planning, sound studies, and sonic art.

This talk will survey the history of Optophones across the 20th century. These 'musical print' machines converted text into tones, enabling blind readers to access print by ear. Historical recordings from several models of Optophone will be played.

Biography

Mara Mills works at the intersection of disability studies and media studies. Her research and teaching interests include communication history (especially related to telephones and reading practices), science and technology studies, disability theory, and mobile media studies. She is completing a book (On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering) on the significance of phonetics and deaf education to the emergence of "communication engineering" in early twentieth-century telephony; this concept and set of practices later gave rise to information theory, digital coding, and cybernetics. Her second book project, Print Disability and New Reading Formats, examines the reformatting of print over the course of the past century by blind and other print disabled readers, with a focus on Talking Books and electronic reading machines.

*Please note: Following the seminar there will be an opportunity to meet with Professor Mills, who is particularly interested in meeting with staff and students who are working in the area of assistive technologies. If you are interested in this opportunity please email Dr Gascia Ouzounian at Queen's University Belfast.

RavivGanchrow’s (1972) work focuses on interdependencies between sound, location and listener, aspects of which are explored through sound installations, writing and the development of acoustic forming and vibration sensing technologies. Recent installations examine context-specific sites in contemporary modes of listening. His on-going Listening Subjects project examines the contextual circuitry of listening whereby audibility, surroundings and subjectivity are conductive of one another. He has been teaching architectural design in the graduate program at TU Delft and is currently a faculty member at the Institute of Sonology, University of the Arts, The Hague.

Gascia Ouzounian will speak at the 'Flourishing Cities' conference hosted by the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. Please find more details below via the conference Website.

Over 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. This rapid urbanization presents both an extraordinary challenge and a remarkable opportunity to improve welfare, drive sustainability, promote inclusive growth and revolutionize the very notion of government. The conference will generate discussions that take on the biggest and most important of these challenges.

“Flourishing cities” will explore big new ideas and showcase examples of innovative practice in government and public policy around the world. It will seek new ways to tackle the impacts of rapid urbanisation across the world and address the challenges of meeting the needs and aspirations of citizens.

Shipping Forecast explores the complex relations between territory and transmission in BBC Radio 4’s shipping bulletin. Coordinated recordings following the long-wave journeying of a signal from inside a studio at Broadcasting House; to the transmitter at Droitwich; to a shipat sea; to a transistor radio several hundred kilometres away; reveal audible aspects of broadcasting. The piece examines attractions between language, geography, radiation and precipitation where transduced speech addresses, defines as well as physically occupies dimensions of terrestrial space.

Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard's works are focused on scientific and aesthetic aspects of sonic perception. He explores acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible to the immediate ear. Kirkegaard's installations, compositions & photographs are created from within a variety of environments such as subterranean geyser vibrations, empty rooms in Chernobyl, a rotating TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself. For this seminar, Kirkegaard will speak about his recent work.

Based in Berlin, Germany, Jacob Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne. Since 1995, he has presented his works at galleries, museums, venues & conferences throughout the world. For this event, Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: Labyrinthitis is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. The Wire selected a recording of Labyrinthitis as one of the ten best releases of 2008.

Dr Sarah Lappin, Dr Augustina Martire and Dr Gascia Ouzounian will present papers at the AHRA annual conference, themed 'Transgression'. Gascia's presentation will focus on recent sound art in Belfast; it will introduce works that critically employ sound as a medium that can preserve, mark, transform and reconfigure place, especially in relation to a 'post-conflict' city. Sarah and Augustina will present 'Defying Boundaries: Forum for Alternative Belfast'. This will examine the work of our research partner FAB, an action-research group that explores alternative forms of development in a city with a history of conflict and division.

On January 26, 2018 Dr Lappin will present a paper at the All Ireland Architectural Research Group being held this year at Queen's University Belfast. She will examine sound art as an increasingly key feature in and critique of public space.